Red Tape

Red Tape

Just behind my apartment building is a small grove of pine trees planted in 1981, in honor of former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek’s seventieth birthday. (He was still mayor then, actually.) It’s a lovely, quiet bit of green where people can hear birdsong and enjoy a bit of nature.

Today, as I passed that grove on my way home from work, I saw that most of the trees had been marked with red ribbons tied somewhere in their branches:

I don’t know how things were over here back in 1981, but these days the area where the grove is located is prime real estate. So I’m sure that the fact that the trees are marked with red tape is not the municipality’s way of noting that they need more fertilizer.

Teddy Kollek is still around, but I don’t think we’ll be able to say the same for the grove planted in his honor approximately twenty-four years ago. It looks as though soon, yet another bit of Jerusalem’s dwindling green space will disappear.

What a shame. What a terrible shame.